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Tuesday, 31 July 2012

Hardly had the Maily
Telegraph’s resident apologist for Willard Mitt Romney, Tim Stanley – who you
can tell as he’s a doctor – delivered
a creative retelling of the GOP’s nominee for the Presidential Election and
his foot-in-mouth visit to London, than the process went through another
painful iteration as the gaffes continued and the Republican Party’s choice got
compared unfavourably with Sarah Palin.

On top of that has been his treatment of the press, who have
not got to ask a question of the Republican challenger for three days now. Even
Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my
arse) has been unhappy about this state of affairs: Greta van Susteren, who
is accompanying the visit for the channel, got an interview with Romney during
his 36 hours in Israel, but hasn’t has a word since.

“I can’t help but feel
a bit like the press is a modified petting zoo since we are trapped in a bus
while Polish citizens take pictures of us” she
observed yesterday. Romney’s campaign even tried to keep press out of a
fundraising event in Israel. And matters did not improve when the circus moved
to Poland, with the media resorting to shouting questions from a distance.

And that has led to yet another unfortunate moment, as
Romney’s travelling press secretary Rick Gorka first
fired back at reporters “Show some
respect” followed by “Kiss my ass.
This is a holy site for the Polish people [Romney had just paid his
respects at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw]. Show some respect” before telling the man from Politico to “shove it”.

Gorka later called the reporters concerned to apologise, but
the damage, once more, had been done. “Mitt's
a much stronger and smarter presidential candidate than the mainstream media
would have you believe” says Stanley hopefully, but if the string of less
than fortunate incidents in London, Israel and Poland is anything to go by, he
isn’t, and the Obama team will not be at all worried.

But no doubt Doctor Stanley will have a nice warm feeling, so that’s all right, then.

[UPDATE1 1 August 1430 hours: the idea that the public Stateside might not have picked up on the negative mood of Romney's tour has been dispelled by press coverage, with a CBS News report typical, going through all the gaffes, including Mitt asserting that he hadn't said a range of things about the Palestinian Authority and its citizens, or even inferred them.

And another problem which Tim Stanley and the other cheerleaders might bear in mind is the latest Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times poll of likely voters, showing Barack Obama ahead in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, three "swing states" that Romney must win in November if he is to have any chance of taking the White House. Around 85 to 90 per cent of those voters had already made their minds up.

Moreover, Obama was at 50% or higher in all three states. The way that the Obama campaign has portrayed Romney, focusing on his time at Bain Capital, is also paying off]

[UPDATE2 3 August 1740 hours: Rick Gorka, who told reporters to "Kiss my ass" and "shove it", has been reported by ABC News to be "taking time off the campaign trail", which sounds kinder than "has been dismissed". Hopefully for Romney, his successor will prove less accident-prone.

[UPDATE3 7 August 1850 hours: Stanley is still clinging to the idea that the Romney campaign is not in trouble, and is neck and neck with the Democrats', but strangely says Mitt "should pick a Tea Party champ for vice President. It's time to get loud and mavericky". Sadly, as elections in the USA are decided, as in the UK, by those swing voters who inhabit the centre ground, that may not be a good idea.

He also chides the media for picking up on "silly details like tax releases", which is so minor and trivial that it could terminally up-end Romney. Already the thought has entered with many commentators that John McCain saw those tax returns and went with Sarah Palin, who of course Stanley was also lauding as a "Tea Party champ".

And Stanley stresses that the idea of a maverick isn't because Romney is desperate and behind in the polls. Give it time - just give it time]

The central premise of the Guido Fawkes blog is that those
doing the writing are the Good Guys, and those they write about – generally politicians
and their friends and hangers-on – are the ones for hire, able to be bought and
bought off. Thus the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer, the
flannelled fool Henry Cole, maintain their image for their readership.

I deserve a peerage, cos I'm on telly!

So perhaps Master Cole would care to explain this
magnificently swollen-headed Twitter exposition from earlier today. When Tony
Grew asserted “I have always said I would
happily take a seat in the (appointed) Lords”, Cole replied “well that’s completely different ... if my
country were to ask me to serve, it would be churlish to say no”. There’s
modesty for you.

That means, quite apart from the ridiculously exaggerated
sense of his own worth – a word in your shell-like, Hen, it’s not exactly a lot
– the flannelled fool is saying he could be bought off by the award of a gong
plus a decently sized bung. What will the sainted Staines have to say about
this wayward lurch from his protégé? Another
fine mess, once again.

[UPDATE 1830 hours: Master Cole, who does not, repeat not, ever look in on Zelo Street - and has even blocked the blog's Twitter feed - has nevertheless seen this post. He has told that his remark was "a pisstake", something I will leave to others, who have not exactly been rushing to his defence.

I also have to tell the flannelled fool that (a) his only "worry" was that I would make him look even more ridiculous than he already does, (b) some of us are not stuck in the schoolroom and so do not make the mistake of calling blogposts "essays", and (c) anyone who is bothered can spot one of his whoppers a mile off.

The only "serving" anyone is likely to ask Cole to do in the foreseeable future is the kind where he assists in doling out the food and drink, which will also be the closest he gets to a gong. As I said, another fine mess, once again]

One self-appointed Olympic participant who won’t be sent
home no matter what the nature of his comments – as he’s already there and his
legendarily foul mouthed editor is the sole arbiter of right and wrong at the Mail – is the tedious and unfunny
churnalist Richard Littlejohn, the Million Pound Hack who has excreted another
steaming column of rank unpleasantness today.

Equality, Guv? It's all ethnics and queers, innit?!?

Dicky Windbag has the Equality Commission in his sights:
because of this body and the associated legislation, he asserts, “it would mean that no one from an ethnic
minority or with any kind of disability could ever be sacked”. He wants the
Commission to be scrapped as “even though
inequality still exists, we are long past the point where we need a full-time,
expensive quango to enforce minority rights”.

Doesn’t the Littlejohn column get subbed? Is there such a
thing as a part-time quango? Or a variable scale of quango expense? Whatever.
Dick knows that the Equality Commission has a sinister purpose: “a cynical piece of New Labour social
engineering designed to scupper any attempt by an incoming Conservative
government to tackle the gargantuan budget deficit generated by Gordon Brown’s
drunken sailor public spending spree”.

But Dick knows the readers will only swallow his drivel if
he serves up a joke or two, however lame. So he has a dig at Trevor Phillips: “If he manages to close it altogether he will
richly deserve the knighthood that is often wrongly awarded to him by
newspapers who can’t tell the difference between him and Sir Trevor McDonald”.

See, they can’t tell them apart! It’s only a bit of fun!!
Where’s your sense of humour?!? And, as the man said, there’s more: “The old Commission for Racial Equality
performed a valuable function in the days when racism was rife”. Er, a word
in your shell-like, Dicky Boy: had you read what you just wrote, you would know
that in your column, racism still is
rife.

Take this gem on the Equality Commission and the minority
groups within it: “the gays have fallen
out with the Muslims and there have been allegations that the Afro-Caribbeans
are paid more than the Asians”. Dick, you’ve opened your North and South
and inserted one of your Plates of Meat in it. You’re behaving like a total
Bell and Cranker. Oh wait, here comes a disability pronouncement.

“There are now
3.2 million people claiming long-term disability, even though they are
perfectly able to do some kind of job”. The number appears to be those claiming an out-of-work benefit,
so Dick is pulling a fast one. And, as I pointed
out yesterday, the assumption that all could do some kind of job is pie in
the sky. This is just another example of dog-whistling, spiced up with a few
choice whoppers.

And then it gets phoned in from a Florida poolside. No change there, then.

At first, Ms Odone appears to sympathise with those judged
fit for work who are clearly not fit, but all changes as she interjects “But wait”, before following up with “Aren’t the Paralympics proof that even the
most physically challenged can achieve awesome feats? Their disabilities did
not prevent Nelson, Byron, FDR, JFK achieving their goals”. This is the
most sublime drivel.

Nelson did not lose an arm, and the sight in one eye, until
well into his career, and like the others mentioned, came from money (the “Lord” in “Lord Byron” is a teensy hint, Cristina). The biggest problem for
both Franklin Roosevelt and Jack Kennedy was not the coping with their
conditions, but keeping them out of the media: a disabled man could not have
become, or remained as, President.

Moreover, Ms Odone fails to appreciate that disability is,
for many, not a stable or static condition: she appears not to know that some
disabled not only have good days and bad days, but also that they cannot
predict which these will be. And if that is the case, then the idea of work,
which, contrary to the suggestion in Ms Odone’s post, many would love to be
able to do, is a non-starter.

She also appears not to grasp the kinds of hoops that
disability benefit claimants routinely have to jump through, even if they have
previously been examined, no matter how many times this has taken place. Ms
Odone would have a better grasp of this had she consulted Sue Marsh’s Diary Of A Benefit Scrounger, which has
a post on this process published
just a week ago.

Without help from another family member, just getting to her
appointment would have been well-nigh impossible, and this is in a city that
has better than average public transport. But it is the bizarre nature of the
assessment form for Employment Support Allowance (ESA) that is most worrying.
The questions asked do not appear to bear any relation to the reality that folks
like Sue face.

This does not detain Cristina Odone, who is on the home
straight: “A man who claims to suffer from
a debilitating but unprovable
backache, an alcoholic who refuses to tackle her addiction: they may be
considered ‘disabled’ but should they receive benefits? When they do, the truly
incapacitated feel cheated”. I’m sure Sue Marsh and others in her situation
appreciate this self appointed expert.

Or maybe they would
prefer someone who knows what they’re talking about.

[UPDATE1 1825 hours: there are in fact two programmes on this subject being broadcast this evening. First up at 2000 hours is Channel 4 Dispatches, then at 2030 hours Panorama, which has moved to BBC2 because of the Olympics. As both are half hour broadcasts, it should be possible to view both without recourse to recording]

[UPDATE2 2105 hours: having watched both the C4 Dispatches and BBC Panorama programmes, it is clear why Cristina Odone has produced her pre-emptive strike. Both broadcasts point up the borderline brutality of the ATOS Work Capability Assessment regime, that there may be targets that ATOS are working to - to minimise the number of those allowed onto ESA - and that the system is failing some to the extent that they have died during the assessment process.

Expect more copy attempting to demonise the disabled in the coming days and weeks. After all, there was much of this over the Motability scheme recently. It is disturbing to think that hacks will readily accede to editors demanding this particular brand of knocking copy, but sadly is not a surprise]

Today brings yet more supposed revelations on the subject of
climate change, and, like so many London bus stories, it’s a case of waiting
for ages only to see two coming at once. This is not a coincidence. Nor is the
routine crowing from the denialist lobby at what they are hailing as yet
another of those magic bullets that never end up convincing the scientific
mainstream that it is wrong.

Given Muller’s previous scepticism, and the hostility of the
denialists towards him, there was always going to be a backlash, and this has
come from Anthony Watts, who had at first said of BEST that “I'm prepared to accept whatever result they
produce, even if it proves my premise wrong”. Now Watts has asserted “New
study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial”.

How so? Well, this reprises the argument over heat island
and other distorting influences on temperature recording stations. It is an
argument that Watts has
ventilated at some length previously. This time, however, he claims to have
used “A WMO-approved Siting
Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy” to produce “A new improved assessment”.

Moreover, Watts claims that “The pre-release of this paper follows the practice embraced by Dr
Richard Muller”, giving the impression that his study is as valid as that
from BEST. However, and with Watts and Co there is inevitably a however, he
does not tell how or where his study is to be peer reviewed (the BEST study is
to be peer reviewed by the Journal of Geophysical Research).

Also, given the reference to Michel Leroy, one might expect,
if not endorsement, at least some comment from him in the Watts study. There is
none. And the team behind the Watts study consists only of known sceptics John
R Christy, Stephen McIntyre, and Evan Jones, which latter you may find hard to
find any information for, although I have unearthed a comment contribution from
him at the Watts blog.

Both the Muller and Watts studies need to pass muster at
peer review before anyone sounds off about their significance. Only one of them
so far is going to be thus submitted, and it isn’t the Watts one. So before the
denialist lobby call “game over”,
they need to wait until the result of that peer review.

Sunday, 29 July 2012

Aidan Burley’s less than helpful Twitter intervention on the
Olympic opening ceremony is still making news, although the Games themselves
will probably eclipse his media exposure and keep it on the dark side of
further examination – provided, of course, that he keeps his head down. All
will then be a matter for his party at Westminster and in the constituency.

In the meantime, though, those concerned at the kind of
ideas and political stance typified by Burley and his contemporaries should, I
would urge, look behind the front men to who, and what, is driving the movement
that has brought us the New Conservatism, this less than tolerant strain of
right-wing belief that is set to cause the Tory Party, and the Republican Party
in the USA, significant problems.

And here we encounter an old favourite of Zelo
Street, Donal Blaney. Just because he is no longer a front line
politician and activist does not mean Donal has retired from such activities to
spend more time with his legal practice: far from it. Blaney, as I keep pointing out, is not stupid: he knows that his best contribution comes from
organising, networking and enabling. Others can be MPs.

Blaney co-founded the Young
Britons’ Foundation (YBF), which is modelled on the Young America’s
Foundation. It works closely with Stateside organisations such as the
Leadership Institiute and Heritage Foundation, and in promoting conservatism, “identifies, trains, mentors and places
philosophically sound activists in politics, academia and the media”. For “sound” read “acceptable”.

Like lobby groups such as the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance
(TPA), there is much emphasis on media training: the realisation of how
effective a broadcast or printed paragraph can be. There is also the assumption
that existing media outlets have an inbuilt left-wing bias, rather than that
they do not serve up news that Blaney finds acceptable. He’s a big fan of Fox
News Channel (fair and balanced my arse).

So how does the master handle criticism? As before, Blaney
proves Olbermann’s dictum – “The right
exists in a perpetual state of victimhood” – true at the outset. Criticism
of Burley means unnamed “leftists”
supposedly want to “burn him at the stake”.
The “faux outrage” is held to be
because he is leading the so-called Trade Union Reform Campaign (TURC). But
TURC is an ineffective joke.

Then comes the magnificent “There is something very sinister about the way that you are not allowed
to oppose the ‘acceptable’ view decreed by leftists anymore”, which verges
on the paranoid, before he loses it completely and says he wants to spew on
someone. And all the time he wants a reasoned
critique to be made of Burley – but only one that he deems acceptable, or “sound”.

Thus the authentic voice of right-wing intolerance. He is the one driving this bus.

[UPDATE 30 July 1100 hours: in case anyone had not appreciated the drift of Donal Blaney's thinking, here is a clutch of contiguously broadcast Tweets from the last 12 hours.

From whataboutery on gun control - Donal is with the NRA on this one - to pushing the "smaller state" agenda so beloved of the TPA, bashing anything that looks like "lefties", sneering at Team GB's athletes, and ultimately telling his followers what he does in the mens' room, this is one bloke you might not want to get stuck in a lift with. And, as I noted previously, he's the one driving the New Conservatism bus]

How does a new entrant to the field of group blogs drive
traffic? Well, in the case of our friends at The Commentator, this is done by aligning itself to reliably
right-wing causes: demonising Hugo Chavez, demonising Barack Obama, and
demonising anyone who does not take a sufficiently acceptable stance on
anything that concerns the state of Israel. It is this last that has come to the
fore at the Olympics.

Moreover, as has been discovered by those seeking some kind
of precedent, there was no marking of the tragedy at the opening ceremony of
the 1992 Barcelona games. This, though, does not detain Shepherd, who
fashions his observation with care: “refusal
of the IOC appropriately to honour the
memory of the 11 Israeli athletes” is his line (my emphasis).

Because the IOC will
honour the memory of those eleven Israeli athletes, on the exact anniversary of
their death – September 5 – and at the exact spot, the airfield at
Fuerstenfeldbruck. Whether or not that is appropriate is a matter of opinion,
and will no doubt be fruitful territory for many a debate over the coming
weeks. But the fact remains that the event will
be remembered by the IOC.

This, too, does not detain Shepherd, who merely cranks up
the rant-o-meter further: “Jewish
athletes gunned down in their prime in the country that gave the world the Holocaust” he froths. Think the
Third Reich reference was an isolated one? Think again: “appeasement of the Palestinians and their supporters
across the Islamic world”. So Muslims and Hitler go together.

Then he says it’s only because they were Israelis. Did he
ask anyone at the IOC? Why bother, when you’ve made up the conclusion? By
attempting to portray that body as intolerant, Shepherd shows that is exactly
where he is coming from. He pretends to speak for Israel, but it is nothing
more than hit-bait for The Commentator.
He ends up not advancing the cause of those murdered one bit.

Here on Zelo Street, there is no view cast
in stone as to the best way that those eleven Israeli athletes, as well as one German
policeman, should be commemorated. But they should be remembered. So here is
the memorial to all of them at the Munich Olympic park (the names of the
Israelis are marked out in Hebrew). Robin Shepherd has managed not to let his
readers see it.

Not that he prioritises ranting over remembrance – perish the thought!

Last week, a
news item told that all of the Greenland ice sheet had been subject to
melting of its surface, and that this was a most unusual event. Both statements
are factually correct, and reports
also stressed that this was not suggesting that the whole of the ice sheet
had melted – after all, this is around 3km thick in places. But that was
sufficient for the denialist brigade to kick off.

Quickly
manning the barriers were the people at Fox News Channel (fair and balanced
my arse), proclaiming “Skeptics put the freeze on NASA ‘hot air’
about Greenland ice”. Fox gave World
Climate Report and Anthony Watts equal prominence to NASA in their report.
The impression was clearly given that some kind of misinterpretation and scare
had been perpetrated.

That this is the official denialist line has now been
confirmed by Christopher Booker and James “saviour
of Western civilisation” Delingpole, sorcerer and apprentice of denialist
pot-stirring at the Telegraph, who
have as one put up the strawman argument that there is a scare, before
knocking it down by saying that there isn’t, which anyone who was interested
would have known anyway.

Booker asserts “These
Nasa pictures, we were told, showed alarmingly that, for the first time in
history, the surface ice was melting right across Greenland. It took only hours
for this scare story to be blown apart”. He continues “A tiny rise in air temperatures had momentarily taken them just above
freezing, enough to melt a few inches of surface ice”. Spot the mistake?

The story that surface ice was melting across Greenland had
been “blown apart”, but there had
been melting of “a few inches of surface
ice”. Right across Greenland. And the “momentary”
temperature rise lasted several days. Perhaps Del Boy can manage a more
convincing tack? Well, sadly, no he can’t: his
first stab is to accuse the BBC of saying that “97% of Greenland has melted”. Their report says not.

Then Del tells his adoring readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers)
that “The right thing to do on occasions
like this, I find, is to head straight for Watts Up With
That? Unlike, say, the BBC, or the Guardian, or the Independent
or most of the rest of the MSM, WUWT's posts are grounded in actual science and
real world data”. To which I have to point out to him that Anthony Watts’
site might not be totally reliable.

Watts features guest posts from a particularly combative
denialist called Steven Goddard. These are considered authoritative. But Zelo
Streethas caught Goddard making
elementary mistakes such as not being able to distinguish between
temperatures and temperature anomalies. He is, as those of us from God’s Own
County tend to say, all wind and piss.

Not that I’d want him to
rain on the Booker and Delingpole parade, of course.

So what’s hot, and what’s not, in the past week’s blogging?
Here are the six most popular posts on Zelo Street for the past seven days,
counting down in reverse order, because, well, I’m a bit late getting the
breakfast on. So there.

6
Murdoch Is Served (77) Yes, we’re that many posts into the series
started in July 2009. This third anniversary edition looked at those being
charged and noted that one of their number, Stuart Kuttner, was the one who let
the cat out of the bag when he overreacted to Nick Davies on BBC Radio. If only
he’d kept schtum.

5
Aidan Burley Gaffe? Taxi For Tories! The MP for Cannock Chase reacted
exactly as his training told him to, as he condemned the positive portrayal of
the NHS at the Olympic opening ceremony as “leftie”.
Burley highlights the problem for the Tories: rather a lot of ideologically
sound but intolerant new MPs.

4
Tabloid Troll Spins And Flounders Poor Dennis Rice was clearly unhappy
at the latest Phonehackgate developments, and was more than ready to defend
Andy Coulson, despite his past, which I felt compelled to remind him about. In detail.

3
Olympic Right-Wing Tweet In Mouth For your enjoyment, this post
assembled a selection of the sour grapes, reimagining of history, and downright
stupidity exhibited by right leaning Tweeters as they reacted – generally badly
– to the rather excellent Olympic opening ceremony.

2
Grant Shapps And Twitter The way in which the Housing Minister gets his
Twitter following to gradually expand was laid bare as it was shown he was
following and unfollowing others on a scale not humanly possible. Either Shapps
has a full time Twitter gofer, or there is some kind of script running in the
background.

1
Guido Fawked – Toynbee Hypocrisy No Zelo StreetTop Six is complete without an
appearance by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer, the
flannelled fool Henry Cole, and today’s is no exception. The Laurel and Hardy
of the blogosphere had accused the Guardian’s
Polly Toynbee of hypocrisy: this post shows that they were not only being
highly selective in their chosen quotes, but also that they were the real
hypocrites. Another fine mess, once again.

And that’s the end of
another blogtastic week, blog pickers. Not
‘arf!

Saturday, 28 July 2012

There is, the great Chief Inspector Clouseau once said, a
time and a place for everything. Sadly, like Clouseau himself, some
right-wingers find following this advice easier to talk about than to do, as a
scan of the mixture of ineptitude, ignorance and sour grapes during and after
yesterday’s Olympic opening ceremony shows all too well.

The examples came in thick and fast, typical being Benedict “Famous Last Words” Brogan of the Maily Telegraph who began “Labour’s triumph is complete”, which is
an interesting reinvention of “lost a
General Election two years ago”.

Always reliable for buffoonery in these things is the
flannelled fool Henry Cole, who started by trying to ape Aidan Burley, then
fell back on blaming unions for trains not running late on, despite management
running the trains. It was management who cut back the hours services ran, such
as Christmas services, which ended in 1964.

Martin Durkin tried “Miserable
leftist version of British history”. Like Brunel and Berners-Lee are “leftist”. He is a truly miserable git.

Meanwhile, looking in from his freedom-giving trip to the
USA, Frank Manning saw something less than ideologically pure, so labelled it “nutty Socialism”. What a prat.

Stephen Pollard of the Jewish
Chronicle railed at the presence of Shami Chakrabati, but somehow managed
not to spot Maestro Daniel Barenboim (not easy).

Raheem Kassam showed how incredibly knowledgeable he is not,
by being forced to ask “Remind me why
they’re speaking French first?”. A word in your shell-like, RK: the bloke
who brought us the modern Olympics was Baron Pierre de Coubertin. He was from
France. Where they speak French. Have a
think about it.

Then he asserted that NHS was a synonym for Marxism, which
will be why no Conservative PM, starting with Winshton, has even considered
dismantling it.

And finally comes the loathsome Toby Young, whining “I feel like I’ve just watched a £27 million
Party Political Broadcast for the Labour Party”. Yes, celebrating the
country’s history and achievements, rather than having a good gripe, is so rotten
and leftist, isn’t it?

Some right-wingers can’t get over that last night was
quirky, maybe over-long, and occasionally tedious, but it was also feel-good,
inspirational, and at times brilliant and downright cool. It showed that we’ve
got feelings, but also real style, and a sense of humour. Ah right, now I see
where the righties have their problem. As
you were.

Nobody should be surprised at the faux whining from
right-wingers this morning following yesterday evening’s Olympics opening
ceremony. As soon as those lights spelled out GOSH (Great Ormond Street
Hospital) followed by NHS, one instinctively knew that some out there on the
fringe would take offence. That the one stupid enough to stick his head over
the parapet was Aidan Burley surprises no-one.

Burley’s Twitter outburst comes from someone whose recent
political career presses all the buttons of the New Conservatism: he was a
Hammersmith and Fulham councillor, he’s allied himself with folks from the
Young Britons’ Foundation (YBF) in taking part in the Trade Union Reform
Campaign (TURC), which does not seek to reform unions but wipe them out, and has
been sacked for a Nazi themed stag party.

Groups like the YBF routinely teach that the Tory Party is
not Conservative enough, and like the groups in the USA on which it bases
itself – such as the Freedom Association and Young America’s Foundation – it majors
in educating and placing ideologically
sound Conservatives into business and politics. And this is increasingly a
problem for the Tories.

The Tory Party has always – of necessity – been a broad
church. The Party has recognised the need for compromise not merely with other
parties and interest groups as it seeks to influence opinion and pass
legislation, but also within its own ranks. This ability to accommodate a range
of views is in direct conflict with the ideologues, for whom no compromise is
permissible.

So for those people, nothing, but nothing, can be said to be
good about the NHS. Anyone saying otherwise must be shouted down and ridiculed.
This is both a rite of passage for aspiring New Conservatives, and a duty for
established players. Burley is now one of the latter. He is merely reacting as
trained.

Burley complains about rappers – see his less than
successful attempt to convince in a Sky News interview HERE –
yet there was only one, Dizzee Rascal, who was born close to the Olympic Park
in Bow. He whinges about multiculturalism, and couples it with all things “leftie”. He expresses dismay at seeing
the CND symbol, but misses the huge following the movement enjoyed in the 60s.

After all, in 1963 there was a fortunately brief look into the
pit, when the USA and USSR came frighteningly close to what would have been
nuclear war, over the Cuban missile crisis. Danny Boyle’s production included
not merely progress, but also protest, something that sets us apart from the
Chinese. That one of the most prominent New Conservatives has a problem with
protest is instructive.

The intolerance of the New Conservatism will be its
downfall. Hopefully for the rest of us this will happen before this poisonous
strain gets its hands on the levers of power.

While the Olympic opening ceremony was wowing crowds,
viewers and pundits alike last night, the Gods of headline writing were not
looking kindly on Mail Online, and
particularly on the outpourings of appalling Glenda Amanda Platell, obedient
servant of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre and season ticket holder for
the sofa on The Andy Marr Show (tm).

Arentcha sick of her?!?!?

Mandy had been tasked with passing adverse comment on
footballer Ryan Giggs, who had committed the heinous sin of not singing along
to the National Anthem before Team GB’s first football match kicked off. Never
mind that he made the goal that earned his team a draw against Senegal, the iron
code of the Vagina Monologue dictates that those not singing along are not the Mail’s Kind Of People.

Sadly, the headline writer must have been one of those 20
million plus who were tuned in to the BBC coverage, with the result that Giggs’
name got mangled and the effect of Mandy’s rant lost. And telling of being “cosseted from reality” and that you “have spent your entire career being a
vulgar, self-indulgent bore” doesn’t really fit the normally self-effacing
Giggs.

But it does fit Amanda Platell to a T. Couldn’t happen to a nastier hack!

Friday, 27 July 2012

There is an unforgettable moment in the third Harry Palmer
film Billion Dollar Brain, where the
paranoid General Midwinter (Ed Begley) is ranting about Communists, and Palmer (Michael
Caine) is trying to make the point that there may not be much point to the
outburst. “Who’re you fighting, General?”
he asks, quietly but firmly. The same could be asked of flannelled fool Henry
Cole.

I don't need to spell properly, cos I'm on telly!

Master Cole, left in sole charge of the Guido Fawkes blog
while the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines piles off to another of his four
houses for the kind of holiday he would readily deny rotten lefties like the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee, has gone off
on a rantfest that would satisfy the most discerning rant connoisseur, on a
subject on which he is automatically an expert, that being Trades Unions.

Cole’s expertise extends, of course, to knowing that these
bodies are A Very Bad Thing Indeed, although his study of them extends to very
little more than the proverbial diddly squat. This mirrors his knowledge of
rail travel: he sneers at enthusiasts but then fails to turn up at the right
station for his train, even when only presented with a choice of one (and it
cost him serious money as a result).

What's wrong is you, matey, not them

But what Cole cannot get into his head is that ignorance is
not a merit badge: if you don’t know the first thing about a subject, it is
advisable to learn the basics before claiming to be an authority on it.
Instead, he assumes that because others of a similar persuasion view Trades
Unions as something to be attacked at every turn, he must do the same, and thus
has formed an irrational hatred of them.

More trouble smelling his worms

So, as with General Midwinter, he doesn’t really know who he’s
fighting, but he’s going to fight them anyway. A typical example is his
assertion “Unions taking £2.5m from MOD
while troops are being slashed”. Unions are not taking anything from [the]
MOD, as I’ve pointed out previously. But Cole does not want to concern himself
with learning, as he knows all about it already.

And he's got the survey results ... or maybe not

And the kind of learning he knows all about is what happens
in schools: “Had many inspiring teachers
who were not formally trained. They outshone the deadwood union types who are
impossible to sack” he froths. Maybe things were different when Master Cole
was undergoing his suitably expensive private education, but when I was at
school I wouldn’t have known whether my teachers were unionised or not.

Spot the agitator? What the hell, rant anyway

But he knows that unions mean “agitators”. Oh yes, because “Poisonous
teaching unions are kicking off again. A cornered vested interest group who are
a hinderence to the improvement of education”. That’s “which is” and “hindrance”,
Hen. Clearly your private primary school English teachers didn’t manage to
instil the confidence in the language in you that my state school ones did.

What untrained teaching leads to

For Cole’s own good,
he needs to do some learning before he goes badly wrong.

You have to hand it to the Maily Telegraph’s Tim Stanley, who you can tell as he’s a doctor.
His ability to creatively reinterpret politics Stateside in order to make it
look as if the Republican Party is about to sweep the board at the Presidential
Election is unparalleled, almost as if he were in training for a later berth at
Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my
arse).

I can't retroactively de-gaffe?

For some time, Telegraph
readers have been relentlessly fed the message that Willard Mitt Romney, the
one that looks like he stepped out of a Make Your Own Identikit GOP Candidate
Kit, is the real deal, a real Conservative – not like that wishy-washy all too
liberal Cameron chap – and that he will wipe the floor with Rotten Leftie
Socialist Barack Obama. Except reality is not quite like that.

First, Romney kept generating gaffes during his own party’s
primaries. The competition, such as it was, should not have detained him. Then
came the fun and games with his “retroactive”
resignation from Bain Capital, following the revelation that he did not leave
when he said he had done, but three years and thousands of jobs exported
outside the USA later.

And then some bright spark had the idea of Mitt visiting
London, in little-old-Englandland. Obama had done it, and goddamn it, he was
not only a Democrat, but his father came from Abroad, so Romney the Candidate
would breeze through the visit. And then, after arrival, he gave an interview
to Brian Williams of NBC and, with perfect synchronisation, opened mouth and
inserted boot.

And the kiss of death for poor Mitt is that the nastiest
gaffe – that on “A Shared Anglo-Saxon Heritage”
– has
brought the approval of Dan, Dan The Oratory Man, who wheels out part of
the Bayeux Tapestry in support of his dubious contention. With friends like
Hannan, Romney is in no need of enemies. And all the while, Obama is extending
his poll lead.

How Stanley will spin that one is going to be interesting. Over to you, Doctor.

Just to prove that MPs can make their mark even when the
Commons is not sitting, self-promoting Tory Priti Patel has joined the fray in
the Trade Union bashing stakes, getting her name into the Daily Mail and setting off an orgy of sympathetic copy-chasing from
the dubiously talented array of non-job holders at the so-called Taxpayers’
Alliance (TPA).

The latter have put forward Jonathan Isaby, former stalwart
of ConservativeHome (not, of course, that the TPA are Conservatives, which was
stressed by former TPA spinner Susie Squire to Nick Ferrari on LBC before she
went through the revolving door to become a Special Advisor to Iain Duncan Smith,
who is, er, a Conservative MP and Minister). Isaby has read from the approved
TPA quotation list.

So Isaby begins with “It
is appalling”, which certainly gets the TPA approach to facts spot on,
before reeling off “we are still being
forced to pay scores of MOD pen-pushers to work for a trade union instead of
doing their proper job”, “the bloated
bureaucracy at the MOD”, and the inevitable “taxpayer-funded union activists”. The scale of false assumption and
dishonesty is significant, but predictable.

None of the workplace representatives works for a trade
union. If they are employed by and paid by the MOD, then they work for them.
Whether the bureaucracy of the MOD is “bloated”
or otherwise is not known to Isaby, as he and his colleagues do not engage with
the organisations they routinely demonise. And workplace representatives are
not “union activists”. So another
clutch of whoppers, then.

The Mail then
exacerbates matters by asserting that facility time is for “union business”, but it is not: it is
for the business of the employer, whether that is health and safety,
discipline, dispute, or training related. And – inevitably – we get another run
out for the unproven assertion that facility time in the public sector runs at
a rate of four times that in the private sector.

Then, at the end of the piece, comes an opportunity for a
union to say something, so the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed
Paul Dacre can claim to have allowed balance, but in reality this is yet
another piece of knocking copy to order. There is no zero sum game of soldiers
versus administrators: if there is no administration, the armed forces cannot
be organised, and cannot operate.

But the object, as
always, is not to let such inconvenient factual detail enter.

It was a kind of French Connection II moment this morning –
although the Gene Hackman characterisation of “Popeye” Doyle is way more handsome that me – when, having caught
more than one right-winger in possession of a dubious number of Twitter
followers, I log in and find that some kind spammer has done it to me, rather
in the way Tory MP Louise Mensch was targeted earlier this week.

The number of accounts that follow Zelo Street had been
growing, but gradually, and was at around 965, give or take the odd one or two.
At first I was just flicking through the recent traffic – especially that
concerning the Twitter Joke Trial, which has now seen common sense prevail –
but then realised that the follower number was wrong. It had increased
overnight to around 19,400.

So Twitter have been notified, and what else I can do I’m
not sure (all sensible suggestions are, as ever, welcome). It’s clear that
whoever is behind the spamming has gone upmarket: none of those long lists of
Brazilian or Indian names with no photos or Twitter bios that blew the cover of
Mark Clarke and Andre Walker – these look to be English speaking, with both
photos and bios.

Which suggests that someone has such a high regard for me
that they were prepared to shell out moderately serious dosh to accomplish the
deed – well, ten to twenty US Dollars, maybe, tops – and I’m afraid that rules
me right out. Here on Zelo Street we don’t spend money on
anything we don’t have to, and if unavoidable, there’s always negotiation
(joke, folks, lighten up).

In the meantime, I have to agree with the serially tenacious
Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads that for
this to have happened, I must have put some noses seriously out of joint
somewhere. Where that may have been is not hard to imagine, but if any of the
sad convocation of yah-boo boys out there on the right think that this jolly
clever jape will see me off, they’ve got another think coming.

And as to why I Tweeted as soon as the increase in followers
was known, well, there is no point in being other than open and honest. Failing
to adhere to this simple rule is what has consistently sunk the right-wingers,
and the notification also has the advantage of negating any line that holds
that I must have done it myself because I’m keeping schtum.

All of this means that it’s going to end up being a pretty
fruitless exercise and a waste of money for some buffoon. And with that, it’s
time to get a nice cuppa brewing. More
later.

Thursday, 26 July 2012

A form of behaviour particular to the right is the
unquestioning support and promotion of anything deemed a significant publication
by one of their number: the whole community almost as one tells that, whatever
the book, paper or even lowly blogpost, it was an event of the greatest
significance. All are urged to read it. The solidarity is unequivocal, even if
those doing the commendation have not read it.

Leave them, Al, they're not worth it

This last point undid the dubiously talented convocation of
non-job holders at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) when they gave their
unyielding support to the Adam Smith Institute (ASI), that museum of outdated
economic thought that has fraudulently appropriated the name of the founder of
economics, over the
latter’s hatchet job on the HS2 project.

Sadly, the ASI “report”
had not been read for technical competence: it is difficult to take seriously a
paper on railways that cannot correctly figure out the distance between the two
rails that the trains run on. The endorsement can be a little too unequivocal
and automatic, and so it has been with today’s
“Britain Unleashed” rallying cry in
the Telegraph by City AM Editor Allister Heath.

Heath is, as anyone who looks in on Zelo Street will know,
less an independent force and rather more a TPA stooge. He was not chosen as
the head of the so-called “2020 Tax
Commission” by chance. So it should surprise no-one that he advocates full
implementation of his own body’s report, and removal of supposed “bureaucracy”, which is held to stop
firms hiring.

He remembers Margaret Thatcher as if through rose-tinted
spectacles, telling that she “eventually
engineered a progressive revolution that empowered ordinary people and
unleashed an astonishing economic revival”. Empowered ordinary people to do
what, exactly? Meaningless flannelspeak. And the “astonishing economic revival” had more to do with North Sea Oil
money, and yet more debt.

Heath’s favourite economist is clearly Friedrich Hayek, but
once again he has not done his homework: even Milton Friedman, darling of the
Thatcherite right and exponent extraordinaire of quack doctory, while admiring
Hayek for his book The Road To Serfdom,
was not impressed by his economics. But Heath also thinks we should rediscover
the spirit that drove the Victorians to build the railways.

So once again he hasn’t bothered looking first. Many of the
railway companies were built from the misplaced generosity of shareholders,
most of whom never got their money back, or even a fraction of it. Not for
nothing was the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway known as the
Money Sunk and Lost. I somehow doubt this style of expropriation would get
Heath many admirers.

Still, it gets his fellow righties a nice warm feeling, so that’s all right, then.

Earlier this month, I noted
that veteran TV presenter Noel Edmonds – or rather the ubiquitous “friends” that prove so useful at such
times – was telling anyone who would listen, which meant Rupe’s downmarket
troops at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, that the BBC wanted him to return to
Saturday night primetime as front man for a new Endemol vehicle called The Bodyguard.

He's not coming back. Or Mr Blobby

Strangely, nobody from the Corporation was available to give
a quote, but readers were assured that BBC1 Controller Danny Cohen wanted
Edmonds, who fronted the Late Late
Breakfast Show, Noel’s Saturday
Roadshow and Noel’s House Party
between 1982 and 1999, back on his manor. After all, Endemol do Edmonds’
current vehicle Deal Or No Deal, and
they were making a pilot show.

Well, now the same Sunis
reporting that Edmonds will not be continuing beyond the pilot. And, by the
usual fortunate coincidence, the “insider”
with the information is telling that it was Edmonds who walked away, because he
didn’t feel the new show was sufficiently “amazing,
different and exciting”. Is anyone out there not hearing their bullshit
detector going off right now?

This report bears all the hallmarks of someone determined to
get his retaliation in first. Edmonds never wanted to leave the Beeb’s Saturday
evening line-up in the first place: had the House
Party been given another series, he’d have been in there like a shot. It
wasn’t his decision, though: the Corporation pulled the show because its
ratings were in freefall and it was out of time.

And there is another factor working against Edmonds: one
hates to have to remind him, being of A Certain Age oneself, but Noel,
sprightly or otherwise, will reach state pension age at the end of next year.
The BBC make exceptions for folks like Brucie, and even he needs a younger co-presenter to help with shows like Strictly. Edmonds is now personally out
of time.

There are dozens of younger men and women who would dearly
love a chance to front The Bodyguard.
The only problem for the Beeb is to select the one who fits the role and brings
the personal chemistry needed to bring in the viewers. There’s no need for the depth
of experience that made Forsyth – and Len Goodman – such a good fit for Strictly. This new show is no place for
old men.

So forget all the creative briefing to the Sun, Noel. The deal is, there is no deal.

The press empire of Richard “Dirty” Desmond is no stranger to flirting with fringe political
parties, as watchers of the Daily Star
– the Sunday version of which was the preferred choice of the perpetually
thirsty Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) as a vehicle for getting his word out
to the masses – will know all too well. February last year brought a nadir in
that paper’s infamous courtship of the far right.

It was then that the Star
ran its “English
Defence League to become political party” front page, talking up
the EDL and its leader Tommy Robinson (aka Stephen Lennon) and asserting that,
in a phone poll – no methodology or other background was released – the paper’s
readers had registered a 98% support for the group. The EDL is virulently
Islamophobic.

Daily Star editor
Dawn Neesom naturally denied any suggestion of Muslim bashing when she appeared
before the Leveson Inquiry, but her appearance cannot have been made any
easier, coming as it did after her former freelance Rich Peppiatt had appeared
and told in no uncertain terms that the Star
was looking to demonise Islam whenever it got the chance.

Now, though, the supposedly flagship title in Desmond’s
newspaper portfolio, the Daily Express,
is also flirting with a fringe political party, and by no coincidence at all it
is one out on the right: yes, Des’ finest are cosying up to UKIP, home of rabid
Europhobia and mainly popular through the blokish populism of Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. Yesterday the paper
lurched closer to backing UKIP outright.

“Now
You Pay £750 A Year To Be In The EU” screamed the headline. But the
“new research” that “reveals” this figure has come from UKIP propaganda,
specifically confirmed Eurosceptic and UKIP leadership candidate Tim Congdon.
So not only is the Express getting
quotes from the party’s MEPs on a regular basis, it is also recycling its
propaganda as if it were fact.

Take this gem: “Figures
released last night show nearly £20billion from UK taxpayers is being poured
into Brussels coffers annually. But the huge burden of bureaucracy and
regulation imposed by Eurocrats could mean the true total is more than double
that amount, the study warns”. Really? No, not really: the net contribution from
UK to EU for 2012 is €5.4 billion, or £4.23 billion at current exchange
rates.

As to the “huge burden
of bureaucracy and regulation”, that will no doubt be defined by the same
party whose leader claims that around 70% of UK law is imposed by “Brussels”, when less than 20% results
from EU laws and directives. But the real news is the steady move by the Express to openly support Farage.

Is some kind of idealism at work here? No chance. The sole
reason is to prop up the paper’s dwindling circulation, and thus another Benchmark Of Excellence.

[UPDATE 1345 hours: as @dailyexpresslol has pointed out to me, the Express' "chief political commentator" Patrick "Lunchtime" O'Flynn has also recently addressed a UKIP gathering at Frimley, telling his audience how the party's meetings are getting bigger and bigger turnouts while other parties' events are said to attract less and less.

He then talks up UKIP enthusiastically and talks of a "perfect political storm", thus confirming not merely that his paper is shilling for Farage and his fellow pub bores, but also that he is starting to believe his paper's own propaganda. When the paper you write for exaggerates the size of the UK's contribution to the EU by a factor of five and suggests it's really twice that, you're taking a serious detour from the path of reality.

Still, at least O'Flynn is still in a job. Until the next Desmond economy purge]

Wednesday, 25 July 2012

So the hearings of the Leveson Inquiry have concluded, no
doubt to the relief of editors, hacks and pundits everywhere who would rather
the whole business of regulation be kicked into the long grass so that they can
carry on bullying, snooping, smearing, threatening, blagging, pinging,
conspiring and, yes, even hacking in the style to which they had become
accustomed.

Now comes the interregnum during which the evidence gathered
will be weighed and sifted – we’re coming over all Homepride here – before some
kind of report is generated and recommendations made. But the period also gives
those who fear that those recommendations may constrain their activities an opportunity
to set an agenda, generate a little knocking copy.

This adds to previous interventions, notably from Education
Secretary Michael “Oiky” Gove, where
Leveson was held to be doing what the BBC was to Murdoch Junior, and what anyone attracting adverse comment from Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster”
Phillips is also guilty of, and that is “chilling”.
And in this context, readers are left in no doubt that “chilling” is A Very Bad Thing Indeed.

The Gove attack has
been honed today in the Maily Telegraph
by David Hughes, who is not any old pundit, but the paper’s chief leader
writer. That means he has the duty of conveying the authentic voice of the Tel from on high to the readers,
something that takes not only the written form, but the unspoken hint, those
readers knowing what they should infer and how they should interpret the words.

And Hughes’ angle is, to no surprise at all, to go after the
Guardian and its editor Alan
Rusbridger, who is held to be too close to Leveson, or maybe the other way
about. This attack has the advantage of appealing not only to the more
traditional right-leaning hackery, but also the more rabid form as seen all too
often at the Daily Mail, Murdoch Sun,
and the empire of Dirty Des.

Thus the battle lines are drawn: expect to see more of this
in the coming weeks, as the absence of real information as to what Leveson
intends to recommend is spun as the coming of a “Guardian charter” which would undoubtedly “shackle the free press”, lead to “statutory regulation”, and therefore a “Big Brother state”, sounding “the
death knell of a great British institution”.

That Leveson hasn’t said anything about where his report may
lead, let alone the inconvenient fact that he won’t be the one to act on its
conclusions, will not deter the Fourth Estate. After all, there are many there
who blamed the Guardian for the
demise of the Screws (even though it
was Rupe who pulled the plug), so blaming them for anything from Leveson not to
their liking will be a doddle.

After all, who is he to stand in judgment on others? That’s their
job.

Last week, Zelo Streetpublished
an item on right-wing group blogThe
Commentator and its Twitter feed, where the nature of its following was
considered. The response from their “editors”
was furious, and included the assertion that I had accused them of purchasing
followers, which was then repeated. But I had not made any such accusation. The Commentator had needlessly
overreacted.

As so often with this kind of thing, the thought enters that
this may have been an attempt to shout “look
over there” and distract anyone from further examination. But what the
assembly of righteousness at The Commentator
may not have known was that I was also examining the Twitter feed of owner and
publisher Robin Shepherd at the time, and have investigated further in the
intervening period.

Here is a three month analysis of the number of accounts
that Shepherd follows: note that for
almost two months, he appears to add fourteen to that number every day – the period
is actually 57 days. That’s iron discipline for you. Of course, there can be no
influence on the number of followers,
because that is down to the impulse or preference of a huge number of disparate
individuals.

Here is an analysis of the same period for Shepherd’s followers. For that same period of 57
days, nineteen accounts are added daily to his total. That’s a net addition of the same number every day for a period of 57
consecutive days. Penny numbers like ones and twos might be credible, but nineteen every day for 57 days?

While you’re having a think about that one, here’s the
analysis of The Commentator’s feed
for the same period. Note that for all but 50 days, the number of accounts
followed remains constant. Then, from June 15, that number increases by one
every day for a further 30 days. It’s no big deal.

Then look at the analysis of The Commentator’s followers. The number increases over that initial
50 day period by 22 per day – yes, by the same net amount every day for 50 consecutive days. Moreover, from June 15, the
number increases to 31, and the follower number then increases by 31 every day for another 30 consecutive days.
What kind of coincidence is that?

Note that I make no accusation of misbehaviour against Robin
Shepherd, Raheem Kassam, Dane Vallejo or anyone else involved with The Commentator, nor any assertion of
malpractice. Nor do I make any accusation of follower purchase or any other
deliberate attempt to falsely boost follower numbers. I am merely presenting
the numbers.

So, folks, do we get another patronising post on The Commentator? Do all concerned keep
schtum and attempt to ignore me? Or does someone explain what these figures
show? In your own time, no pressure.